A Neo-Piagetian Analysis of Infants' Visual-Motor Abilities

Visual-motor abilities in infants were investigated within a neo-Piagetian framework of development. Case's (1985) theory of intellectual development provided the conceptual base for this study. The study's objective was to establish whether development in the motor domain proceeds in a stagelike fashion. This aim was addressed by (a) the development of a model that suggested how the structural changes, as specified by Case's theory, might manifest themselves in the subdomain of the use of an object to execute a simple motor response and (b) the measurement of infants' performances on a set of newly constructed tasks designed to assess the sequence of changes in cognitive operations. Forty children, aged 4 to 18 months, were tested. Subjects were classified by age into one of four groups corresponding to the substages of the sensorimotor stage postulated by the theory. The general hypothesis that children's visual-motor abilities would proceed through four substages was supported. The individual pattern of performance across substages yielded a perfect Guttman scale (Guttman, 1950). Analysis of variance indicated no significant deviation from linearity for any group, no sex effects, and no Sex × Age interactions, as predicted. This study suggests that a cognitive developmental approach can provide a more complete understanding of visual-motor abilities in children, because it can explain recurrent cycles in development and, given an appropriate task analysis, predict the skill level of a child at a given age. The implications for future research are also discussed.